


Tricks

by cherrytart



Series: Burglarising [14]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Awkwardness, Gah, Multi, Penultimate, bagginshield, certain characters being hard to write, fem!Bilbo, i was called out over criminal lack of Kili and Billa interaction and have rectified this, unprecedented divulging of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-13 11:26:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrytart/pseuds/cherrytart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trickery, it has to be said, is part and parcel of the role of 'burglar.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tricks

**Author's Note:**

> This has been delayed by a lot, but on the plus side my exams are over, so no more distractions. Eternally grateful to all readers and everyone I've kept waiting.

“I would suggest not to fidget, small one. It becomes you not.” Lady Rekel’s Westron, what little she has of it, is always delivered in liquid and impeccable tones- and in this case, a reproving one.

“Why are you _here_?” Billa asks, hoping to deflect the dwarrowdam’s attention from her fraught state. It is chilly here at the gates to the mountain, and she is beginning to regret insisting upon the loose cream frock she is wearing (it is at least _comfortable_ , and she chose it when she had been under the impression that they would be waiting _inside,_ thank you very much.)

Rekel shrugs as she answers, the jewels through her brows bobbing gracefully. “I know the lady Dis. It is…what is the word…”

“Seemly?” Billa suggests, hugging herself and fighting the urge to crane her neck in search of Freya- Fili has her perched semi-safely on his shoulders several metres away. _‘Keep a lookout, pip.’_ were his exact words as he swung her upwards.

“Hmm.” Rekel replies, clearly dubious regarding the hobbit’s impromptu translation. Billa suspects her presence has more to do with the fact that she is the highest ranking dwarrowdam here, although Lady Mim, Gloin’s charming wife, is surely among the gathered crowd as well.

Most of the new populace of Erebor and quite a few of the Ironfist guests have turned out to welcome Thorin’s sister home at last, all of them dressed in finery as befitting the arrival of a princess. For herself, Billa Baggins cannot help but feel a little inadequate, especially since Rekel pulled her over here. “Are you two friends, then?” Billa asks, a little perplexed.

For the first time since they have met, Rekel laughs.

“Never mind.” Billa says at length, realising she is unlikely to get a straight answer. “I’m sure I don’t want to know.”

“I wouldn’t worry, milady- I mean, mistress Billa. Lady Dis shan’t bite ye.” Bessr says from Billa’s other side. Billa gives the young dwarrowdam a grateful smile, hoping that she is right and, as with the rest of the line of Durin, Fili and Kili’s mother’s bark proves worse than her bite.

Still, she cannot help but shiver in the breeze and continues to do so until something heavy and warms lands on her shoulders. At first she mistakes it for someone’s cloak, but when it suddenly develops a will of its own and drops its head down on top of hers, she is forced to reconsider.

“Yes, Kili?” she asks, turning her head slightly towards him as he does a fair impression of Freya with her stuffed bear. “What is it?”

“Think Uncle’s gonna skin another warg to make you a muffler if you keep on.” Kili replies, and though she can’t see his face, she can tell he’s grinning. She looks over at the King Under the Mountain, who averts his gaze the minute their eyes meet, folding his arms across his chest. Fondness stings at Billa’s heart at his posture, straight backed yet defensive, and in spite of the cold she suddenly feels very warm.

“Another?” she prompts, frowning and rubbing her reddened palms together.

“Mmm. He’s got the pelt of Azog’s beast slung up on his chamber wall, haven’t you seen?” Kili asks her.

“I…I haven’t been into his chamber.” Billa admits, fighting the temptation to look ahead to where Thorin is standing. “Well, not since I came back anyway…”

She remembers Thorin’s room though from years before,  remembers the great bed carved from stone and the fire he kindled in the grate to keep her warm, remembers the faint pervading smell of dragon and dust. She recalls the muffled clatter of the Arkenstone as it dropped and rolled across the floor, brighter than the sky after snowfall.

“Oh.” She feels Kili nod, chin knocking against her hairline. “So that’s why he’s still so grumpy.”

“Kili!” Billa protests, elbowing him in the stomach- ineffectually, it seems, for he just laughs and ruffles her hair. Rekel snorts and she can see that Bessr has gone pink- he is half showing off, Billa realises, but  there is genuine wondering in his tone when next he speaks.

“Going to put him out of his misery?” It is almost a whisper, but she hears it perfectly well even if she rather wouldn’t have done.

“He’s nowhere close to miserable.” she protests- avoiding the issue, yes, but she has done so for so long it seems natural. “He’s just…just…Thorin. Like he always is.”

At that, Kili lets her go in favour of swinging an arm around her shoulder. She can feel him grinning at her- that brittle grin she would give her soul to exorcize from the once-carefree boy she knew when she was one of the company. “Y’know for all you’re one of the smartest people I know you ain’t half good at tricking yourself.”

Billa, rather than being affronted, is pleased. “Well your uncle wouldn’t have hired me if I weren’t tricky.” she says pleasantly. It is part and parcel of the title ‘burglar’ after all. If not an entirely positive quality.

Kili grunts. “Not the point. Thorin doesn’t talk about it, but he loves you as…there isn’t a right way to say it in Westron. I hate it, I hate what happened and what he did but-”

“Don’t.” Billa suddenly pleads. “You mustn’t. He is your uncle, and I’d never forgive myself if I drove a wedge between you.”

Kili sighs and tweaks the end of her braid. “It was done years ago, Mistress Boggins. No changing it.”

“Save me from the stubbornness of dwarves.” she intones, reaching up and catching his hand. She could turn and look at him but she knows him leaning on her isn’t entirely for her benefit- the cold must be agony on his leg. **(she wept when she found out, for him and belated tears for Fili’s ruined face- her boys, half broken and still strong)** Another thing to atone for, another wrong that cannot be made right in any way she sees.

All the same, she is not a Baggins of Bag-end if she does not at least _try_.  “Promise me you won’t blame Thorin for my mistakes.”

“Your mistakes?” Kili seems to be speaking through gritted teeth. “You’d have me blame you when all you did was try to help us?”

“Well maybe neither of us deserve blame.” she says without thinking. Then the stiffness in Kili’s arm and Bessr’s sideways glance (this is not the ideal place for this particular conversation, she now realises) make her realise just what a fool she is for all her own trickery.

“You wretched…little…imp!” she hisses, admonishing herself too late for falling into Thorin’s favourite term of address when Kili makes deliberate mischief. “That was not fair.”

“I’d give up if I were you, Mistress Billa.” Bessr advises. “Line of Durin- no arguing with ‘em, me Da says.”

“Well that I can believe.” A sardonic voice from over to their left interjects, and Billa regrets letting Paladin accompany her here instead of staying at the Ur family residence with Hamfast, but he insisted and she supposes it is better than leaving him behind again.

“I object to that, for starters it’s not- look!” Kili breaks off and his voice fills with the wild excitement that is usually only visible when he’s shooting an arrow.

“What?” Billa asks, trying to crane her neck but finding it difficult with Kili practically clambering on top of her. “Is it-”

“Mother!”

She’s not sure how exactly Kili manages to leap over her as though she were a fence post, but he does it and for a few minutes everything is a mess of Thorin trying to conduct a formal reunion ceremony of sorts (at least she thinks that is what is happening, but they aren’t speaking Westron and there is rather a crowd if one counts the wagons and ponies and all of it) whilst Fili and Kili hop from foot to foot, and then all of a sudden Freya is returned to her and both boys are piling to hug their mother.

“Oh, my boys.” the dwarrowdam says says, her voice low and soft, touching the line of Fili’s scars and steadying Kili when his leg causes him to stumble. “My boys.” Careworn as only a mother can be, separated by weight of miles and years and a kingdom reclaimed.

A cost written on the bodies and faces of her sons. On the new lines around Thorin’s eyes and the chip of stone beneath a mountain, counting back the years.

 _Years._ Billa holds her own child close and cannot fathom it. She knows that dwarves do not count years the same, but her mind refuses to even think of such a separation, though her heart makes sure to clench painfully at the prospect.

She is not so strong, could not be half so strong as Lady Dis must be. Lady Dis, who looks startlingly like Thorin now that Billa can see, her face is thinner but the resemblence still strong- and oh _, of course,_ that is where Freya got the line of her jaw from.

Such a peculiar mix of feeling attacks her at that thought that she utterly faisl to notice that the Lady Dis, who has Thorin’s colouring and Freya’s chin and is Fili and Kili’s mother and a _princess_ of all things- is looking right at her.

“So.” she says, and Billa blinks at the sudden prick of familiarity of that tone. “This is the hobbit.”

Behind her, Thorin’s face twitches into something that might be a smile, and both Fili and Kili’s eyebrows disappear into their hairlines. Billa Baggins wonders why anyone bothers being shocked by anything anymore, or at all.

Instead of sassing something back (there are a million sharp tongued retorts in her head she’s been storing up since first meeting Thorin and are probably better suited for him than his sister), Billa eases her wriggling daughter to the ground and tries to bob a polite if inelegant curtsey. This is made immediately difficult by the fact that Freya, averse to being passed around so much, grabs onto her around the hip and plasters herself to her mother’s legs, muffling her face in Billa’s skirts.

“Oh, well done, brother.” Lady Dis turns back to Thorin briefly. Very briefly, since she is suddenly standing in front of Billa.

“Lady Dis.” Rekel says, then adds something in khuzdul that the hobbitess cannot hope to understand.

“ _Lady_ Rekel.” Dis replies, gimlet eyed. The two women stare one another down over Billa’s head before breaking into chilly smiles.

This of course pre-empts Dis turning her startling blue eyes on Billa, expression impossible to read in a way that would probably put Paladin’s fearsome mother to shame if held for too long.

“You are Billa Baggins of the Shire.” Dis says coolly.

“I am.”

“You served my brother and his company as burglar on their fool quest to reclaim our mountain.”

“I did.”

“You stole our Arkenstone.”

“Stole is a relative-”

“Dis, I don’t think-” Thorin tries to interject.

“Hush, brother. Nobody asked you. Miss Baggins, you bore my brother’s child.” The dark blue eyes do not move from Billa’s.

“Yes.” she replies, trying not to flinch.

“And seduced my son.”

“Which one?” Billa finds herself saying, determinedly not looking either dwarf in the eye.

“Fili.”

“I did not.”

“Kili, then?”

Billa scoffs. “I hardly think so. Who told you these things?”

 “A charming hobbitess named Lobelia when I was passing through your village a month or so hence.”

“Ah. Of course.” If she ever gets back to Hobbiton, words will be had. As it is, she finds it in herself to smile blandly at Thorin’s sister. “Anything else?”

Dis does not smile back, but her brow eases from its furrows. Her hair is glossy black, braided back into two thick tails, dressed with blue thread and gold. She is of a height with Fili yet still manages to loom over Billa.

“Yes. The child you...oh…” The Princess’ voice turns unexpectedly gentle as Freya turns her face to her mother’s skirts. “Are you my niece, little faunt?”

Freya looks up at Billa, who tries to nod encouragingly rather than making a squeaking sound of hurt and gladness jumbled up, for it still baffles her, even as Dis opens her arms to lift Freya up how easily and gladly the Dwarven half of her little girl's family accept her when most of Billa’s own relatives pitch between exasperated glances and ignoring her coolly.

Billa knows that children are precious beyond measure to dwarrows who have so few of them, but they are precious to hobbits as well, family is _the **most** important thing_ but hers is illegitimate and so the Shire has turned its back. And still, frustratingly, she misses it.

So much so that she strives to put the thought directly from her mind, and instead catches Thorin’s eye half by accident- there is something warm there, something warm and gentle and possessive and constant that she loves almost best on this green earth.

She looks away again and sighs to see Dis hold Freya and tease her sons, but it is still there when she makes her way to Thorin’s chamber later and finds him plucking at that aged harp of his, when he looks up at her knock on the open door.

There is to be a feast to welcome back the princess, and Billa is dressed in the red tunic again, the golden hair on her feet washed and brushed, and she has wound her way to Thorin’s door for lack of a suitable reason why not to.

Thorin murmurs something under his breath in Khuzdul, laying the harp aside. After a moment looking at her that way (for of course he has realised how his gaze can monopolize her even when he doesn’t mean to have caught her with it). “Come.” he says, getting up to pull her inside.

The whole mountain rings with singing and smells of incense and slow cooked meat, and Thorin’s chamber is all richness of stone and fur and furnace heat. There is the white warg pelt on the wall. There is the great royal bed. Billa’s insides swoop unforgivingly, but she steps inside in any case.

Thorin guides her until she is sitting with her back to his chest, like he would in Mirkwood with danger on all sides, only now he is relaxed, even easy in his manner. “I would braid your hair, halfling.” he says, fingers playing at the ends of her unbound tresses.

“If you like.” she nods, because his touch is gentle and she would probably make a hash of it if left to herself- or include something that would no doubt be viewed as incredibly insulting by somebody and set diplomacy back several decades.

“Freya?” he asks after a few minutes.

“Asleep. She was rather upset at not being allowed to come to the party, so Fili and Kili made it their mission to exhaust her all afternoon.”

“ _Party_.” Thorin scoffs. “Feast, if you please. Are the boys with Dis now?”

“I assume so. It has been what- four years since they’ve seen her?” Billa replies.

“Five.” Thorin replies. “Four since you…well, no matter. You like my sister well?” Thorin’s voice is low.

“She is very like you.” Billa can imagine the look on her Kings face following that statement. His hands still in her hair. “So yes, I like her a great deal.” she eventually supplements, and Thorin resumes his task.

“Fili is my heir.” he says bluntly, tying off one braid and moving to another.

“Really?” Billa affects surprise, although she knows what he is getting at. “I had no idea.”

Thorin grunts in response. “What I mean is that…this is how it has always been. He will be king once I am gone. I cannot…”

Feeling very droll all of a sudden, Billa smiles to herself. “He will be a good king. The best.” she tells Thorin, for she knows that _he_ knows this as well as she does. “He does his duty by you, and does it well. Yavanna’s mercy, Thorin, I would not want that for Freya, or for…”

“For who?” Thorin says, more relaxed now it clear that she understands. She may not quite know her place here, but she knows what it has done to Thorin to train his nephews for Kingship, to Fili and Kili to carry the weight their whole lives.

“Don’t.” she says instead of continuing. _For any other children we might have._ She cannot think of that, it is not something she can keep in her imagination so it must not be allowed to stay in her mind at all. Past or future, whatever hypothetical longing she might have or have had is not worth mentioning.

“Very well.” Thorin murmurs. “Thankyou.”

She thinks she feels a kiss, feather light against her taut cheek. “Thorin…” Billa tries to think of what on earth she could say to that, and draws a frustrating blank.

“Hush, **_azyung_**. That shall be my ration for the rest of our days, if you so wish it. I am sure better dwarves than I have murdered for little and less.”

“You are ridiculous.” She tells him, for her heart has tightened against the string that binds it to the dwarf in who’s arms she sits. She is still not used to words such as this from him, and cannot help but feel she does not deserve them.  

“Aye.” Thorin finishes another braid. “A fool of a King.”

“Only in some things. Not in others.” Billa whispers, because the weight of belief in his voice drives her to compromise. She straightens then, speaks louder. She wishes them into another time, another land where there would be no Arkenstone, no elves, no Erebor, no curse on the blood of Durin. But all is here and here they are, and there are games that even she must play to the end. “What are you doing to my hair, then?”

He turns her to face him before answering, and true to his words, does not touch her face again. (his hands clench as they always do when he is forcing himself not to touch her.) He takes the thickest braid in his hand and tucks it through a loop of her hair, pinning it back with one of those lovely little grips he made for her.

“They are ceremonial, most. This one is for your protection, as a treasure of the line of Durin.” he speaks in a hushed voice and she senses a great power behind his words and these head trimmings that a little hobbit such as she, whose greatest hair adornment has been a silk ribbon her mother brought her at Tuckborough fair, cannot even hope to understand.

So she is loath to speak, and lets him continue. Here at least she can feel almost as though she belongs, even if she must go into the feasting hall and endure the judging stares of countless noble dwarrows and her cousin’s lamentations for the Shire.

After a second of this line of thought she concludes that she would much rather listen to the rapt words of the dwarf in front of her. The identical braids to either side are for kin, and  honoured one at that, which makes her smile and frown all at once. A half hidden plait towards the back stands for _honoured mother_.

“And look here.” The braid Thorin catches between his fingers is so delicate it must be tucked behind her ear so as to prevent it from coming undone, and, she notices with a flare of shock, is fastened with one of Thorin’s own beads. “It seems I have caught myself the beloved of a king.”

Billa’s mouth drops open a little as she tries to decide between _too far_ and saying something ridiculous akin to _I love you you royal idiot and I would love you if you were still a wandering blacksmith-_ which she knows he would take as an insult rather than a compliment.

She is not sure if he leans forward or she bends her head, but their foreheads touch almost at the exact same moment, gentle as she has never felt him. He does not try to kiss her- perhaps he never will, for dwarves take no liberty with lips and that thought should not fill her with such an empty melancholy.

They stay like this for seconds or what might be a good hour, she honest to goodness cannot tell and does not think she wants to. Perhaps that is why it seems so sudden when he surges to his feet, taking her with him.

“We must…” he mutters, and they are halfway down the corridor out of the royal chambers before she realises that she should probably ask him what is going on.

But she hopes she will not be counted too much of a ninny if she says that there is magic in the air this night, the same that filled the round rooms of her smial when the dwarves of the company sang of their exile, rich and sweet smoke seducing her to follow them, filling her with a yearning for their mines and mountains which has never quite gone away.

And so she does not speak, does not break whatever spell has fallen on Erebor made whole at last, and she follows. Now is not a time for words or tricks.

She is glad of the heavy red tunic when she feels the stark night air issuing from a tunnel they turn down, and she wonders how she ever could have thought it colder in the day. And then Thorin pulls her by the arm through an archway, and all thoughts go out of her head altogether.

There are many balconies carved into the side of the mountain, shadowed by pines or pillars or overhanging rock, but this one has been set back, half into the earth and yet as much a part of the open air as the lights of rebuilt Dale gleaming away to the side distance.

The lights here are closer though, lanterns shining from alcoves in the stone. There is grass beneath her feet, the air smells fresher the further out she goes and further out she does go, for there are beds ringing the grass, empty but dark with fresh mulched dirt.

Billa Baggins presses her feet into damp brown earth, forgetting she has a feast to be going to, and looks her fill of this dark stone garden.

For innumerable seconds, there is silence. Thorin stands beneath the archway, every inch a King and yet with a kind of shyness on his bearded face. “It is not finished yet.” he says eventually, and probably a good thing too for Billa does not think she could talk without breaking into ridiculous gasping sobs it seems she has been holding back a lifetime.

“It is _winter_.” she manages to say at last. Well, it _is_.

“Not for much longer. Soon it will be spring- you can go to Dale, buy plants and tools and whatever else you need.” He sounds almost earnest.

Billa scarcely hears him. “You did this. For me?” she asks, half afraid of the answer.

Thorin looks relieved as he answers. “It was here already. In the elder days, Erebor was home to many, and some wished to work in the open air. We do not do such now, but…”

“It is…it is lovely.” Billa says, aware of how stilted she sounds. If she cries now, it will seem colder.

“You have your gardener to thank for that. He was very…exacting…when he agreed to help me in this.” Thorin lays a hand on the stone, as if he is anchoring himself once again, but not away from her this time. “You need not view it as a gift from me. You deserve….you need a place in the mountain, if you and our daughter are to be here. I would have you content.”

 _Content._ Billa mouths the word, tasting it. “I would have you the same, my king.” she says, not knowing why.

“What makes you believe that I am not?” Thorin says in a low voice, stepping a few harsh paces into the garden. She cannot look at him, so her eyes find the earth instead, and of course the answers are there.

_Because you are a fool, but I am a trickster._

_Because I defend you to all but myself._

_Because I love you but will not allow you to love me in return._

_Because I forgive you but do not believe I ought to be forgiven._

_Because I have been cruel to us both, and that is not fair._

_Because I betrayed you, and what if I do so again?_

_Because I could not bear to love and leave you another time._

 

“No my lord.” she turns her back, leans against the rail of stone, looks out at the slopes of snow and rock. “I believe you are content.”

“Then where is the obstacle?” Thorin asks, and she feels him at her side.

“There should not be one.” she replies. And then, in a rush “I want you. No, hang that I _need_ you, need so much it burns in me all the time and there are no words in any tongue I know to say it right.”

“If it is so hard, you should not. I know it already, my jewel.” Thorin murmurs.

Billa leans her head forward, fragile and heavy all at once. “Sometimes I think I cannot breathe.” she says quietly.

He does not try to hold her, though perhaps that might make everything better. Because that is not the answer, so quick and easy as it seems. There is mess, and fuss to be made, and arguments to have and mend. There is a beloved daughter to raise and a kingdom to rule, and how could any of that ever be easy?

Perchance it never will, and she suddenly finds she does not want it to be. It need not be. It is just a garden, after all, and she is just a hobbit and he is just a king.

And that is just a trick, and a good one at that.

“Do you ever-” she asks, wanting to know if he feels the same as she does.

“Every day.” Thorin replies levelly.

“Can I help?” she asks, she who cannot help herself.

His eyes are the blue at the centre of a flame, and he is steady as the stone beside her.

“I do not know.” Thorin says.  

“Can I try?” she attempts instead. _Can you?_

The years stretch between them again, raw as open wounds. “We will be missed.” he says after a while.

She sighs, a deep breath heaving from her chest. “Well.” she says, “We can’t have that.

His smile splits suddenly when she faces him, all wolf king, ferocious in sudden love. He extends his hand, ( _i was a burglar, I stole the heart of the mountain, the heart of a king and both are the same thing as the other yet neither can encompass everything he is because he gave me a child and I love him for it, how could i not)_ and, slow and steady, hinged as she is to the earth, she takes it. 

**Author's Note:**

> One more to go! ~twirls~  
> God, feels weird to say that. YOU ARE ALL SO LOVELY AND I HAVE LOVED WRITING THIS SO MUCH I DON'T WANNA END IT! *grumps off to write epilogue*


End file.
